Principal Platform Engineer

About the role

Gradial builds an AI-native marketing operations system that automates execution and streamlines workflows for creative teams. We are looking for a Principal Platform Engineer to architect our infrastructure and ensure our systems scale effectively as we grow.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Manage the operational health, reliability, and scalability of our production environment.
• Advance our use of Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, observability, and infrastructure as code.
• Establish engineering standards for system design, deployment, and operation.
• Create internal tools and automation to increase developer velocity and confidence.
• Oversee incident response, monitoring, alerting, and service readiness.
• Collaborate with the engineering team to proactively identify and mitigate scaling bottlenecks.
• Guide the long-term strategy for platform security, performance, cost, and reliability.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience in platform engineering, SRE, DevOps, or infrastructure roles with production ownership.
• Demonstrated success managing infrastructure within high-growth, fast-paced environments.
• Advanced knowledge of container orchestration and cloud-native architecture, specifically Kubernetes.
• Proficiency in GitOps, infrastructure as code, and modern CI/CD deployment practices.
• Strong understanding of reliability and observability, including tracing, metrics, logging, and alerting.
• Ability to lead through influence and drive technical decision-making across teams.

Nice to have

• Experience with ML or AI infrastructure, such as model deployment or GPU provisioning.
• Background in managing resilient multi-cloud or cloud environments.
• Proficiency in Python or TypeScript for building operational automation and internal tools.

Skills & tools

• Kubernetes
• Infrastructure as Code
• CI/CD
• Observability (Metrics, Logging, Tracing)
• GitOps
• Python
• TypeScript

Practical notes

• Compensation includes a performance-based annual bonus and equity awards.
• Benefits include fully covered medical, dental, and vision for employees (75% for dependents), 401k, and fertility/family-planning support.
• Perks include unlimited PTO, a Seattle office with a gym, sauna, and bike parking, plus free lunch three days a week.
• We prioritize AI literacy; however, candidates must demonstrate their own problem-solving skills during interviews. Over-reliance on AI-generated interview responses will lead to disqualification.